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Thursday, January 26, 2012

A Wrinkle in Time: 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs Celebration

It's hard to believe that A Wrinkle in Time is turning 50 this year.

This book was a landmark book in my reading life. I chose it from the Scholastic book order in sixth grade. I was a voracious reader, but this was in the first book that really challenged me to THINK and to FEEL.

Although I've read it over and over again, I've never read it aloud to my students. Last year's class (4th grade) embraced the challenge of a long science fiction book (The Search For Wondla), so I decided to try A Wrinkle in Time with this class.

I reserved 24 copies of the book from the public library so that every student could read along, and they've each got a short stack of mini stickie notes to mark juicy (or unknown) vocabulary words and places to go back to and discuss.

Then I made a somewhat radical decision. I am not reading the book to them.

Madeline L'Engle is.

We're listening to the audio book!

We are only a few chapters in so far, but the combination of having a book to follow and a very different voice to listen to as we read has been magical. The students have been studying the cover illustration in minute detail, and as we have been introduced to each new character so far, they go back and look again and talk some more. This is our cover:

Can you see the evil man with the red eyes? He's both in the background and in the sphere that someone (we're not sure who) is holding aloft. I didn't notice him until my students pointed him out to me.

I'm excited to see what else about this old favorite will be made new and fresh as I read along with my fourth graders.

Hi Mary Lee, I just reread this for an award challenge I'm participating in, and reviewed it. It's such a marvelous book, along with all the others. What a great idea to use the audio of L'Engle reading her own book. It will add to the magical experience. I hope you tell us what your students think after the book is finished.

It is one of those books that marks the literature of our childhoods. As such, I knew I wanted to share it with my students and have read it aloud a couple of times to 5th grade classes. I had never thought of using an audio version. I will have to pursue this idea as doing all of the Mrs' voices sure drains my vocals. Great idea!

We Are ALSO Proud Members of the Nerdy Book Club

Celebrate!

About Us

Franki and Mary Lee are both teachers, and have been for more than 20 years.

Franki is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Beyond Leveled Books (Stenhouse), Still Learning to Read (Stenhouse), Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop (Scholastic) and The Joy of Planning (Choice Literacy). She is also a regular contributor to Choice Literacy.

Mary Lee is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Reconsidering Read-Aloud (Stenhouse) and has poems in the Poetry Friday Anthology, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations (Pomelo Books), Dear Tomato: An International Crop of Food and Agriculture Poems, National Geographic Books of Nature Poems, The Best of Today's Little Ditty (2014-15 and 2016), and Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's Poems are Teachers.